Touched by Rumi: April 2020
/Rumi has the ability to reach people of all backgrounds, ages, religions, and more. His wisdom sparks us to look within and influences us to view ourselves and the world in a different way. In this section of our Monthly Newsletter we ask people to show us how Rumi has affected them and their way of thinking.
For Fariba, and The Rumi Educational Center,
whose motto is “ A bird can only fly with a wing
of knowledge and a wing of love."
She knows we need doubles now.
WHY DID THE PIGEON NEED TWO SETS OF WINGS
“Usually I hate pigeons.
City rats, we call them, rats with wings,
but today, it’s coronavirus time
so everything is topsy-turvy, upside down.
On my short walk, mask on, head down, I tail
a pigeon feeding ahead of me between the cars.
This one’s different— all white, a goddess,
virginal somehow. Alone. No male is strutting
after her. She pecks at the macadam.
She has a set of grey wings on her back,
a design made from her own feathers.
Beautiful, like something woven in a tapestry,
or a spirit symbol in a Navajo rug.
Creeping behind her (she’s a she, I know)
I follow her. She moves ahead, I follow.
Desperate, I try to take a picture
to save her somehow— a kind of talisman
to keep hope, to honor her for making beauty
in a dark time. To chime, to shine, to rhyme.
She senses it, stops moving
(posing almost) so I can take the shot.
She knows that double wings are needed
and has made a second set.
I don’t think I would have seen this
were it not corona time, nor could I
make this poem, my second set of wings,
to fly my song in this dark time. ”
Unpublished.